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Old tricks work: HCMC prey to Africa long firms
Many Ho Chi Minh City-based importers and exporters have fallen victims to African and Asian ‘partners’ which conned considerable cash posing as legitimate firms seeking cooperation based on trust and pay-in-advance thumb rules.
A Ho Chi Minh City-based importer named X., after finding out a supplier in Cameroon via the Internet, immediately signed an agreement to import timber from it without verifying its profile.
X. advanced 11,000 euros, or 20 percent of the total contract value, as required by the supplier 7 months ago but have yet to receive the timber from the African supplier ever since.
It tried to reach the supplier to get the advance back but the latter cut off all the contact with X. right afterwards.
Another firm in the same city signed an agreement to buy 150 tonnes of scrap cotton from SG Trading Corporation which claimed to be based in Pakistan.
It then paid for the imports via a Pakistani bank only to get garbage and stones inside the containers shipped by the Pakistani ‘partner.’
The Vietnamese firm shortly after lost contact with its supposed-to-be supplier which turned out to be a fraudster as confirmed by Vietnamese diplomatic and trade agencies in the native country.
V., another victim also based in the southern hub, signed a contract to sell 16.4 tonnes of rubber for Global Trading Corporation (GTC), another Pakistani swindler.
It shipped the rubber to Pakistan after receiving a 10 percent deposit from GTC which has never transferred the remaining amount of money since then.
Tips to avoid tricks
Ly Quoc Hung, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, advised that Vietnamese businesses should think twice if an African partner’s business license is written in English because French is often used in official documents in such countries.
African cheaters can falsify any kind of documents; and they always use fake names and phone numbers, wrong fax numbers, and other gimmicks to dupe their victims, Hung noted.
Terms and conditions of a contract are often loosely set so that payments can be made in a most relaxed way, he pointed out.
Vietnamese embassies and trade commissions in foreign countries are good consulting sources for the firms to reduce the risk of being cheated, Hung said.
According to him, transactions should not be made via unofficial foreign exchange outlets or dubious lending institutions.
They should obtain documents directly from well established local banks instead when doing business with partners in foreign countries, he suggested.
Over 60 cases of Vietnamese firms being cheated by foreign partners were reported to the Ministry of Industry and Trade between early 2009 and early March 2011.
Most of the cases are related to companies from such West African countries as Benin, Togo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, and some others in South Asia. |
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